This series of blogs started with the quarterback analogy, discussing all of the things an amnestic but not confused quarterback had to do on every play. If we were to design a protocol to determine whether a quarterback was amnestic of the events of a game, any sports writer could do it. Ask the man about the plays, the winning scores, the interceptions. Especially the interceptions. If a quarterback doesn’t remember the interceptions, he is clearly suffering from amnesia.
Is it really that much harder to determine amnesia in the real world? Yes and no. We don’t have the blueprint of what the person was doing for the hour surrounding the injury like we do with an NFL quarterback. But if the person was in an automobile accident and was taken to the Emergency Room, we do have at least an idea of what might have happened to them in the last hours.
- Question One: Tell me about the ambulance ride.
- Question Two: Did you have to check in with billing before you got to me? If so, tell me about the process.
- Question Three: I see you are wearing a neck brace. Who put it on? When did you begin to hurt?
See, it really isn’t that hard. We know an awful lot about what the person likely has been doing in the past hour. See if they remember the details.
When asking the questions, don’t ask simple yes or no questions. If yes or no questions are asked, use them as a simple transition to more open ended questions. If you direct the persons response with a yes or no question, you will learn very little about how they are thinking. Make them talk, recall and explain. By the time the person is seen by a doctor in the ER, it is often two hours post accident. That may be late enough to determine the beginning of issues with amnesia.
If the doctor would imagine himself a sports writer asking a quarterback about the game, our identification of amnesia in the Emergency Room could grow exponentially. It is time to move beyond the level of inquiry of the Glasgow Coma Scale.
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